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Updated: May 21, 2025
The one who lay on the earth was Montparnasse; the one who was on top was the old man. All this took place a few paces distant from Gavroche. The old man had received the shock, had returned it, and that in such a terrible fashion, that in a twinkling, the assailant and the assailed had exchanged roles. "Here's a hearty veteran!" thought Gavroche. He could not refrain from clapping his hands.
And the two children followed him as they would have followed an archbishop. They had stopped crying. Gavroche led them up the Rue Saint-Antoine in the direction of the Bastille. As Gavroche walked along, he cast an indignant backward glance at the barber's shop. "That fellow has no heart, the whiting," he muttered. "He's an Englishman."
"Poor creature," he said in a low tone, and speaking to himself, "he is hungry." And he laid the hundred-sou piece in his hand. Gavroche raised his face, astonished at the size of this sou; he stared at it in the darkness, and the whiteness of the big sou dazzled him. He knew five-franc pieces by hearsay; their reputation was agreeable to him; he was delighted to see one close to. He said:
"More than you have, perhaps." "Well," returned Jean Valjean, "keep the money for your mother!" Gavroche was touched. Moreover, he had just noticed that the man who was addressing him had no hat, and this inspired him with confidence. "Truly," said he, "so it wasn't to keep me from breaking the lanterns?" "Break whatever you please." "You're a fine man," said Gavroche.
"Poor girl!" said Gavroche. "She hasn't even trousers. Hold on, take this." And unwinding all the comfortable woollen which he had around his neck, he flung it on the thin and purple shoulders of the beggar-girl, where the scarf became a shawl once more. The child stared at him in astonishment, and received the shawl in silence.
And I shall certainly go to see him beheaded on the guillotine, the wretch!" "You've got the sniffles, old lady," said Gavroche. "Blow your promontory." And he passed on. When he was in the Rue Pavee, the rag-picker occurred to his mind, and he indulged in this soliloquy: "You're in the wrong to insult the revolutionists, Mother Dust-Heap-Corner. This pistol is in your interests.
The old man did not appear to notice it, and held both his arms with one hand, with the sovereign indifference of absolute force. The old man's revery lasted for some time, then, looking steadily at Montparnasse, he addressed to him in a gentle voice, in the midst of the darkness where they stood, a solemn harangue, of which Gavroche did not lose a single syllable:
The storm increased in violence, and the heavy downpour beat upon the back of the colossus amid claps of thunder. "You're taken in, rain!" said Gavroche. "It amuses me to hear the decanter run down the legs of the house. Winter is a stupid; it wastes its merchandise, it loses its labor, it can't wet us, and that makes it kick up a row, old water-carrier that it is."
At every discharge by platoons, Gavroche puffed out his cheek with his tongue, a sign of supreme disdain. "Good for you," said he, "rip up the cloth. We want some lint." Courfeyrac called the grape-shot to order for the little effect which it produced, and said to the cannon: "You are growing diffuse, my good fellow." One gets puzzled in battle, as at a ball.
There was besides, in Montparnasse's sentence, a literary beauty which was lost upon Gavroche, that is mon dogue, ma dague et ma digue, a slang expression of the Temple, which signifies my dog, my knife, and my wife, greatly in vogue among clowns and the red-tails in the great century when Moliere wrote and Callot drew.
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